Schubert’s Sonatas

»The state should keep me, I have come into the world for no purpose other than to compose.« With these words, Franz Schubert described himself perfectly: the sensitive composer was a quintessential artist. Despite that – or perhaps precisely because of it? – Schubert struggled with his own artistic identity his whole, short, life (he was only 31 when he died). Because, like many other Romantic composers, he had one major problem. He was paralysed by a great veneration for Ludwig van Beethoven – the great master’s musical legacy was oppressive.

This issue was all the more desperate for Schubert because he was a contemporary of Beethoven’s and he experienced the overwhelming model first-hand, even if the two composers only met personally a single time. »Who dares attempt anything after Beethoven?« he once groaned. In short, he had a bad case of the »Beethoven Complex«.

And yet he seemed pre-destined for a life in music. Born in 1797 in what is today the Viennese district of Lichtental, young Franz was the son of a school principal who taught him the basics of music at an early age. He received organ, piano and composition lessons, and he became a member of the Wiener Hofkapelle Choir at the age of eleven. His teachers included Antonio Salieri, and he got to know Haydn and Mozart’s instrumental works through the orchestra he played with.

It soon became apparent that he also had a talent for composition. The earliest works to have survived date from 1810, and when he was just 17, Schubert composed his first opera, a mass, string quartets and early masterpieces such as the song »Gretchen am Spinnrade« based on Goethe’s »Faust«. From 1818, he and musician and writer friends of his organised events in which his works were performed in a private setting and which later came to be known as »Schubertiade« – a title that is still used today for chamber music festivals.

Already here it is apparent that Schubert was interested primarily in dialogue with others, which led him to compose an unusually large number of songs, as well as piano music for four hands. However, he did not aspire to a career as a virtuoso, and unlike Mozart, for example, he did not go on tours. Apart from a few journeys within Austria and two summers spent at the Hungarian residencies of Count Esterházy, Schubert never left Vienna. However, his works were certainly written for the public to hear, as the long (and futile) search for a publisher shows.

Schubert also tried his hand at the genre of the piano sonata when he was 17. As was the case for Beethoven, this genre provided Schubert with an opportunity to express both personal and universal themes at the same time. However, Schubert quickly freed himself from the influence of his great role model and we can see a number of fundamental differences emerge in the composition styles (this, incidentally, also applies to the symphonies).

Unlike Beethoven, Schubert does not rely much on the conflict between contrasting themes. And while Beethoven uses musical motifs like Lego blocks to build a movement, Schubert preferred to give his exuberant melodic and harmonic imagination free rein, creating themes that flow as if they never end. To achieve that, Schubert needed space, which is why he developed a kind of music that completely suspends the listener’s sense of time, especially in his later sonatas. It wasn’t for nothing that Robert Schumann, referring to Schubert’s great Symphony in C Major, spoke of a »heavenly length«.

Out of the more than 20 sonatas he began, Schubert only completed twelve. Musicologists usually divide these into three periods: the first still clearly influenced by Beethoven; a middle period in which he is freeing himself from the model and experimenting with harmony; and then the three final sonatas from 1828, the year of his death. This season, the »Pianomania« series presents a comprehensive cross-section from this singular treasure trove of piano works – including the first and the final three sonatas, as well as a number of movements from the unfinished works. Four concerts that demonstrate why Schubert need never stand in Beethoven’s shadow.

Text: Simon Chloste; last updated: 18.10.2022
Translation: Seiriol Dafydd

In the 2022/23 season, the »Pianomania« series presents a broad selection from Schubert's piano treasure treasure – four concertos that show that Schubert by no means had to hide behind Beethoven.